Holloman located the MQ-1B Predator that crashed Wednesday.

Emergency responders have located the MQ-1B Predator remotely piloted aircraft that crashed six miles northwest of the Holloman Air Force Base Wednesday.

The crash happened around 1:30 p.m.

Col. Andrew Croft said responders started searching for the aircraft at sunrise Thursday.

"We eventually found the airframe about 11:30 a.m. local time," Croft said. "It actually crashed in the location that we thought it was going to be in. It's actually on Holloman Air Force Base proper land. It's not on White Sands Missile Ranger land or the monument. It's actually on our land. Our orbital area actually overlaps both areas of land. If you loose an airplane in one location, it could be on White Sands Missile Range. If you loose it on the other side, it could be on our side of the line."

After experiencing an in-flight emergency during a routine local training sortie Wednesday, the aircrew flew the MQ-1B Predator to a pre-programed loiter path in a safe location away from human activity, per U.S. Air Force regulations, he said.

"There are no live sorties here (on Holloman)," Croft said. "They're all dummies. The aircraft normally train down over in the area of White Sands Missile Range, down near that base to the south. It actually orbited to the northwest of the base where we send our aircraft if there's an emergency bailout of a manned aircraft or it's where we're going to send the remotely piloted aircraft if we expect it to orbit for awhile or it runs out of fuel. It's not used for training. It's used for emergency situations."

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The aircraft was assigned to the 6th Reconnaissance Squadron that's part of the U.S. Air Force's Remotely Piloted Aircraft Formal Training Unit at the 49th Wing.

Croft said the cause of the crash is unknown at this time, but a board has been convened to investigate it.

"We don't know what the emergency was because we don't know," Croft said. "The airplane has a pre-programed mode. If the line of the frequency link that we were flying with it is somehow lost, the airplane automatically flies to that emergency location which is seven miles northwest of the base. It just sits there and orbits at a couple thousand feet. The airplane had already come back from its training mission. It was coming into land when we lost the link to it. It went over to that pre-programed area where the pilots program it to go to that area if they lose the command link to it."

He said no one was injured as a result of the incident, and no private property was affected or damaged.

"We have an investigation team has been formed," Croft said. "They're collecting all the evidence of mechanical. They will collect the airframe, pull all the records from the airframe itself and the records from the ground control station that we controlled it with because we record all that data. At that point, it takes a month to analyze all that data to determine the source to the crash. We won't know for a month the source of that crash."

He said he believes that probably in a month or two, they will release the source of the crash.

"If we look at all Air Force planes that we fly, the MQ-1 and MQ-9s have the safest flying record of all," Croft said. "If we look at the number of the crashes per flight hour. It's actually -- in the grand scheme of things -- it's actually the safest airplane that we fly. We've flown 2 million hours in the airplane in the last 15 years. That's a lot of flying hours. It's the most reliable aircraft that we fly. It's a couple million dollars in airframe versus $60 million in airframe with other aircraft. I think the MQ-1 is cheapest airplane that we have."

He said he believes the one great thing about the MQ-1 and MQ-9s is the fact that they're unmanned.

"We have a concern with public safety," Croft said. "The public is also concerned when anything falls out of the sky. When there's not a human being involved in it, it makes it a lot less traumatic. When we do normal search and recovery, it involves ambulances and things to mainly find the person. In this case, we don't have to do that. We have the aircraft on our property. We don't move anything until we're satisfied that we have as much evidence from the scene until we start picking up evidence and pieces from the site. It will probably sit there for a few days."

It's the fifth UAV to crash at Holloman since 2004 where an MQ-1 UAV crashed and burned on White Sands Missile Range.

An MQ-1 Predator also crashed while taking off Sept. 11, 2009, one day after Holloman announced initial operational capability of the Predator at the base.

The base experienced two more crashes within a week during October 2010 when an MQ-9 Reaper and an MQ-1 Predator were damaged upon returning from separate training missions. In April 2011, an MQ-9 Reaper sustained damage when it crashed during a landing attempt.

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